Amy Winehouse Best Remembered For “Powerful” Music …

• July 28th, 2011
• Posted by EUEditor

The death of the British singer and song writer Amy Winehouse has produced friendly appraisals of her music worldwide.

Found dead last Saturday at her North London home, at age 27,  she was cremated on Monday (26.8.11) after a service held for family and closer friends, some fans and media finding out where it was and making up a crowd of about 300.

Parallels were drawn with the demise of similarly hard-living rock identities at uncannily the same age, notably Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, but the music was decided different.

A tribute posted on the Wikipedia encyclopaedia referred first and foremost to her “powerful contralto vocals and eclectic mix of musical genres including rhythm and blues, soul and jazz.”

Detailed credits:

“Winehouse’s 2003 debut album, Frank, was critically successful in the UK and was nominated for the Mercury Prize. Her 2006 follow-up album, Back to Black, led to six Grammy Award nominations and five wins, tying the then record for the most wins by a female artist in a single night, and made Winehouse the first British female to win five Grammys …  On 14 February 2007, she won a BRIT Award for Best British Female Artist; she had also been nominated for Best British Album. She won the Ivor Novello Award three times, one in 2004 for Best Contemporary Song (musically and lyrically) for “Stronger Than Me”, one in 2007 for Best Contemporary Song for “Rehab”, and one in 2008 for Best Song Musically and Lyrically for “Love Is a Losing Game”, among other distinctions. The album was the third biggest seller of the 2000s in the United Kingdom.

“Winehouse was credited as an influence in the rise in popularity of female musicians and soul music, and also for revitalising British music. Winehouse’s distinctive style made her a muse for fashion designers such as Karl Lagerfeld. Winehouse’s problems with drug and alcohol abuse, violence, and her self-destructive behaviours were regular tabloid news from 2007 until her death…”

An autopsy was held but the cause of death had not been determined by the time of the cremation.

The music network MTV has recorded skyrocketing sales this week for Amy Winehouse’s music.

“According to Nielsen SoundScan, Winehouse sold more albums in the past reporting week (which ended on Sunday) than she did in the first six months of this year, moving 50,000 copies versus 44,000 year-to-date as of July 17”, it said.

“That sales push has sent her second album, 2006’s breakthrough Back to Black, into the #9 position on the Billboard 200 albums chart this week, with 37,000 copies sold. In the previous week, the album had sold just 1,000 copies. In a testament to the power of the Internet, of those Black sales, 36,000 were digital.

“Sales of Winehouse’s 2003 debut, Frank, were also up, charting at #57 with nearly 8,000 in sales, a 4,100 percent jump from the week before. As with Black, nearly all of the Frank sales (7,000) were digital, with online purchases accounting for more than 95 percent off all of Winehouse’s sales this week.

“The figures for Black were the highest weekly tally since the week ending March 2, 2008, when it moved 38,000 units just two weeks after the British singer won five Grammy Awards.”

Reference

Wikipedia, SF, “Amy Winehouse”, 27.7.11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Winehouse, (27.7.11)

MTV, NY, “Amy Winehouse’s Music Sales Spike”, 27.7.11.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1668000/amy-winehouse-music-sales-spike.jhtml, (27.7.11)

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